The orthoptera
species file is based at Museo de La Plata,
Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina (and data
management/server at University of Illinois)

The database
covers the Order Orthoptera
(grasshoppers, locusts, katydids, crickets, and related insects), worldwide both
living and fossil.In October 2013 it held
26200 valid species names and 4800 species
name synonyms, 8500 taxon synonyms in total.There are 1860 common
names.

Pedellia ancashensis (c) MM Cigliano & H Braun 2014

The original Orthoptera Species File (OSF) was
an eight-volume printed catalogue by Daniel Otte, published 1994–2000. In 1997
Daniel Otte and Piotr Naskrecki posted the first version of Orthoptera Species
File Online on the Internet, which contained the data for katydids, including numerous
photographs). David Eades started to develop a new version of OSF along with sophisticated
software that incorporates many requirements of the International Code of
Zoological Nomenclature. Since 2010, addition of most data is done at the Museo
de La Plata,
relying on Zoological Record and many other sources, as well as the
contribution of users. All past and present development is accomplished in cooperation
with the Orthopterists’ Society.

Two authors, a programmer,
and two students work on the database.

It contains 99.9% of
described species, citations to taxonomic references are 90-95% complete, 40%
of the species have images, many of them photos of types and live individuals

It is continuously updated
and completed, based on publications and information sent by orthopterists.

MM Cigliano’s favorite group
are melanopline grasshoppers, because they can be found in a variety of
habitats from grasslands at sea level up to high mountain environments. The
interest is in the diversity of the Orthoptera group and the evolutionary hypothesis
and biological questions that can be extracted based on the knowledge of the
different taxonomic groups.

H Braun is fond of “little
walking leaves”, leaf-mimicking katydids of neotropical rainforests of the
tribe Pterochrozini, which in the future will be treated as subfamily,
following findings of a recent molecular phylogeny indicating that they are
sister group of all other Tettigoniidae.General fascination for insects and in particular numerous undescribed
katydid species found during an ecological survey in a mountain rainforest of
south Ecuador.

Future taxonomy should integrate
a cyber-taxonomy infrastructure to facilitate rapid identification of
specimens, prepare species descriptions for publications, and make new data
readily available on the Internet.

If additional funds were
available it would be good to photograph type specimens
in as many collections as possible, add additional images of diagnostic
characters, collect distribution records to complete maps, travel around to
take photographs of live individuals and find new species in unexplored areas.